


(Tonight We Are) Victorious

by yxurstruly



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Crushes, F/F, Self-Indulgent, Slap or Kiss, Spin the Bottle, Truth or Dare, the whole dang set, yeah we got em all
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-18
Updated: 2020-05-18
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:27:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24257398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yxurstruly/pseuds/yxurstruly
Summary: As The Responsible One (TM), it was Lucretia's duty to be apprehensive of Magnus's "family game night." Especially with recent developments in the...romantic attachments department.(Early Stolen Century era.)
Relationships: The Director | Lucretia/Lup
Comments: 7
Kudos: 39





	(Tonight We Are) Victorious

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from "Victorious" by Panic! At The Disco.

“Family game night,” Magnus had called it jokingly. Once every few cycles or so (or maybe a few times, depending on the cycle), when Merle and Davenport would lock themselves away together for a night, Magnus took it upon himself to organize an evening of drinking and games (and drinking games) to distract the rest of the crew from the obnoxious goings-on behind Merle’s locked(?) door that none of them preferred to think about.

It had been about eight months since their last game night, a bawdy card game Lucretia had at first tried to get out of (as she always did) with some feeble excuse about catching up on her journaling but had ended up winning, triumphantly and drunkenly and much to the surprise and delight of her team. It had been fun; she looked back fondly on it more often than one so responsible (such as herself) maybe ought to.

Now Magnus was announcing another game night, gathering the team in a circle, and Lucretia readied her obligatory Responsible Objection to deliver before inevitably agreeing to play along. When she settled down into the circle, though (Barry on her left side and Magnus to her right), there were no cards or dice to be seen.

Magnus clapped his hands together. “Truth or Dare!” he announced loudly, laughing as his suggestion was met with varied yelling. “With a twist,” he justified with a wink.”

“A twist of lime, I hope,” Taako deadpanned, already tipping back whatever beverage he had whipped up for himself beforehand.

The group exploded with laughter but Lucretia could only sit and stare quietly at her hands folded in her lap as Magnus nominated Taako as the game’s first victim.

When they had first played this game, back towards the end of cycle two, it’s not like Lucretia didn’t have secrets. Of course she had secrets then (they all did—there were so many things to learn about each other). Lucretia told a loosely-defined Truth about the one test she had ever failed, which was met by tipsy gasps and giggles from the group and followed by Taako playing on the dangerous side and accepting a dare which had ended with more fantasy Lucky Charms on the floor than even Lucretia had seen coming.

The dares this group could come up with were wild; Lucretia always picked Truth as a rule for her own good. Exposing the mortifying ordeals of her past were nothing compared to the lack of clothes, sobriety, and/or dignity she would most certainly end up with if she accepted a dare from any one of those knuckleheads.

But now, ten cycles since the inconspicuous start of their Truth or Dare shenanigans and Lucretia’s sworn adherence to Truth, it wasn’t just a matter of her own dignity anymore. It was also a matter of Lup’s.

Lucretia had a new secret, and it was burning her up from the inside. No, that was melodramatic. She was dealing with it fine. She had feelings for Lup and it was fine. What wasn’t fine was when Magnus had caught her staring not once but an embarrassing total of twice as Lup had left the kitchen, blowing a kiss or tossing a wink over her shoulder. And he knew. He totally knew. He hadn’t even said any real words (just made some uncomfortably knowing noises) but he totally knew.

(Magnus dared Taako, Taako dared Barry, Barry truthed Lup, and somehow Lup skipped Lucretia and it was back to Magnus again.)

“Lucretia,” Magnus smiled, “truth or dare?”

Damn. After Taako’s compliance with a dare to crawl seductively into Barry’s lap and Barry’s glee at having to deepthroat a tall stack of cheese cubes, it certainly wasn’t going to get any safer to pick Dare.

“…Truth?”

“Aha,” grinned Magnus, a glint in his eyes. “Who was—or is—your most recent crush?”

Maybe it was just Lucretia’s imagination, but the other four crew members seemed to lean in ever so slightly with a collective bated breath. Lucretia met Lup’s eyes across the circle. They glimmered with mischief. Lucretia looked away.

“Who is it, Lucy?” Taako prodded drunkenly.

“Magnus—” Lucretia protested.

“It’s Magnus?” Taako exclaimed.

“It’s not me,” Magnus said cryptically, eyes locked expectantly on Lucretia.

“I don’t want to do this one,” Lucretia announced, shaking her head. “No way. I’m not.”

“Alright!” Magnus near-shouted over the tipsy boos of the others, suspiciously excited. “This is where my twist comes in!” He got up, rushed to the kitchen, then rushed back in with an almost-empty liquor bottle whose contents had once belonged to Taako.

“Okay,” he grinned, setting the bottle down on its side in the center of the circle. “Give her a spin.”

Lucretia paused, agape. (The circle cheered.) She looked to Magnus. He looked right back, an unrelentless glint in his eyes.

She picked up the bottle and down what was left inside. The group exploded. Magnus looked impressed. Lucretia set the bottle back down and spun.

And the bottle spun.

Until it stopped.

Point unmistakably at Lup.

Lup, who looked shocked. (Lucretia’s mouth went dry.)

“Aha!” Magnus yelled. He was doing a lot of yelling. “Lucretia, leave the room!”

“…What?”

Taako looked up at Magnus, drunken wonder in his eyes. “Slap or Kiss?”

“Slap or Kiss,” Magnus confirmed. “Our choice. Lucy, out.”

“Yeah, get out of here!” Taako cheered. “We’ve got some deliberating to do.”

The time Lucretia spent in the hallway just outside the closest thing the Starblaster had to a living room couldn’t have been more than sixty seconds, but they were the longest sixty seconds of her life so far. She hadn’t kissed anyone in—what was it, fourteen years? Pitiful—and Magnus was about to expose her—her inexperience, her incompetence, and worst of all her crush on Lup—

“Okay,” she heard Barry yell, shaking her from her trance but doing nothing to alleviate her panic. “Come on back!”

Lucretia took her place in the circle, right across from Lup. Her hands were shaking. Her mouth was still dry. This was going to be terrible.

Taking a split second to compose herself, though, Lucretia noticed that Lup looked apprehensive too. She meant to take a moment to dissect that, but then Lup had a hand on her cheek and Lucretia tilted her head up just the slightest and something big and billowing flashed in Lup’s eyes (something akin to—an apology?—no, something else—) and in an instant Lup had pulled her hand from Lucretia’s face and brought it across again for a swift slap.

It stung. On every level of the word, it stung.

But it would be stupid to cry.

So she forced a laugh instead. She broke eye contact with Lup and scooted back into her place in the circle.

“Barry,” she managed, not bothering to survey the group’s reaction, “truth or dare?”

***

The night was a haze. Lucretia had two drinks—one more than she was used to—and shrunk as far from the heart of the game as she dared. As soon as it seemed the central energy was dying down she excused herself to retire for the evening (it was only midnight—not nearly as bad as she had expected). What she didn’t expect was a hand on her shoulder right outside the door to her room.

What she expected even less was for the hand to be Lup’s.

(Or did she totally see that coming? She was totally out of it and kind of exhausted and her face still stung if she thought about it too much…but yeah, maybe it made sense for it to be Lup?) But now she was standing face-to-face with Lup, who was beautiful. (Of course.)

“Hey,” she smiled, “I’m really sorry about that.”

“Oh, no, no—” Lucretia stumbled— “no, it’s nothing.” She lifted a hand to her cheek. “It was a good one, actually.”

“Could’ve been better if I’d had any say in the matter,” said Lup, leaving Lucretia puzzled. “The night would've gone down a little differently if I had,” she continued, “but you know our boys. Crazy bastards. They said we’d both expect them to pick Kiss and they couldn’t let us have that satisfaction.”

That second drink was apparently taking its toll on Lucretia’s mental capacity, she decided. The pieces slid slowly together in her mind. The finished(?) puzzle elicited a double take. “Wait. You mean that…?”

“I would’ve much preferred to kiss you,” Lup said, and she was flushing a wonderful rose. “Though ideally not in front of those rats.”

“I hadn’t really planned on them being there either,” Lucretia spewed before she could stop herself, “when we ever…if we—”

(Where was her self-control when she needed it?)

“If and when we ever kissed,” Lup finished. “It’s good to know you’ve put some thought into it too.”

Lucretia swallowed. This was so not happening.

Lup put a hand on Lucretia’s face. This was so happening.

“‘s this alright?” Lup murmured, and Lucretia could only nod. In the brief moment as she leaned in, she half-expected a withdrawal of Lup’s hand, a follow-up slap, a punchline and a laugh and an end, but then Lup was kissing Lucretia and every one of her whirring thoughts melted away.

Lup was warm, and she was tender, and her touch was so distantly familiar (hand on jaw, mouth to mouth, heart against beating heart) that Lucretia didn’t once stop to worry about having forgotten how to kiss. They moved together, sweet, languid, and when Lup pulled away, Lucretia found herself chasing after, eyes closed, lips hungry.

When she opened her eyes, Lup was smiling.

“I’d love to continue this, babe,” she purred in a low voice that made Lucretia’s knees weak and sent her stomach out from under her, “but you look about ready to pass out.”

“I—” Lucretia paused to think. She wanted so much, so much more of Lup right now but she could just feel Future Lucretia’s distaste if she wasn’t up and running functionally by seven the next morning.

“We can, uhm, we can continue this tomorrow, then,” she said, trying for smooth and cool (and hopefully not coming off as disappointingly responsible).

“I look forward to it,” Lup said, pecking Lucretia on the lips once more before heading off down the hallway to her own bedroom and tossing one more brin-melting wink over her shoulder as she went.

Lucretia wasn’t sure if it was possible to win Truth or Dare, but suddenly she was feeling rather victorious.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for sticking around! Drop me a line @moon-jellie on tumblr--talk to me about these lovely girls or anything else TAZ!


End file.
